Monday 1 (12/07/10)

Made my first trip to the University today. The campus is quite stunning – deep green lawns with winding paved footpaths and buildings set at interesting angles to each other. The place reeks of privilege, partly because maintaining lawns in the desert is somewhat of a luxury, no matter how ubiquitous it may be throughout parts of LA, and partly because of the pretty young students cycling, skateboarding and driving golf buggies along the broad paths.

I took a while deciding which photo to post. I took a few of the most interesting architecture. This one shows the Bovard Auditorium and Administration Building, which is probably the least interesting building architecturally, but it gives the best impression of what it’s like to walk around the campus. This is the only ivy-covered building here – I suspect that any university with a claim to age tries to have at least one as some sort of badge of honour (although that is only a complete outsider’s impression). It did make the following lines from Tom Lehrer’s ‘Bright College Days’ spring to mind, however:

Bright college days, O carefree days that fly,
To thee we sing with our glasses raised on high.
Let's drink a toast as each of us recalls
Ivy-covered professors in ivy-covered halls.

Another gloriously sunny day today, and not too hot (only 19 C in the shade). Tomorrow is forecasted to reach 25, and Wednesday 26, but the rest of the week is set to drop back to 20. I think I’m very lucky to be here in a cool summer – and to have happened upon a campus with plenty of leafy shade.